Everyone, welcome to Dempari Night
All together fly, fly far away, boing!
Both adults and children can shine
Yeah yeah yeah welcome to the wonderland
This is a slightly strange country of dreams
You’re upside-down, how weird
Are you me and I’m you? What is this strange, strange, amazing world?

An inside-out backwards polka
You stumbled on a forest maze while dancing
After wandering through you found
An exciting place
A thrilling thing
We’re always waiting
Now dive into the illusion night (hey!)

Come here, Dempari Night all over the world
Fairies who escaped from the world of dreams
Are having a secret carnival tonight
See, it’s an infinite maze wonderland
When we take your hand, we can go anywhere and anytime
Don’t stop, boys and girls
If the magic eventually runs out,
then this place, this view, just this feeling
exciting (yes!) electrifying (yes!) I want to hang on to them, look
Dempari Night is over the top

Under a clown’s shadow, it goes tick-tock, the toy clock
When we get trapped between darkness and light, we’ll be smashed without a trace
So I want to do more silly things
Be laughed at and make people laugh
Because I’m a comedic clown
In a strange, strange, extraordinary story

Come here, Dempari Night all over the world
You’ve never heard this in a fairy tale,
Such an awful and great story
Hey, this is somebody’s Neverland
If this is okay, I wonder if this is okay
Because there’s no right answer
Movies and music and bookshelves
Doctors and brilliant scientists and even politicians
Can’t make it (yes) Can’t reach it (yes) Open the door, look
Dempari Night is over the top

Check a Dempa!

Come here, Dempari Night all over the world
Fairies who escaped from the world of dreams
Are having a secret carnival tonight

See, it’s an infinite maze wonderland
When we take your hand, we can go anywhere and anytime
Don’t stop, boys and girls
If the magic eventually runs out,
then this place, this view, just this feeling
exciting (yes!) electrifying (yes!) I want to hang on to them, look
Dempari Night is over the top

Twinkle twinkle your paradise
Come here, come here, to the shining place
Twinkle twinkle your paradise
We want to see you, and you
Twinkle twinkle your paradise
Come here, come here, to the shining place
Twinkle twinkle your paradise
I want to see you, welcome to Dempari Night

One thing we don’t eat in my household is beans. I heated up a can of imported refried beans once and my husband didn’t like them (who doesn’t like refried beans??). But I do make tacos regularly, and I wanted a side dish to go with them. So I threw this one together.

A week or so ago, I noticed that Kirin was running weird commercials advertising a new drink called Butterfly (バタフライ), which contains 1% alcohol.

The flavors of Butterfly available are “Take It Easy! Apple” (気楽にいこう！アップル/Kiraku ni ikou! Apple), “Let’s Go! Ginger” (ゆけ、ゆけ！ジンジャー/Yuke, yuke! Ginger), and “Happy-Go-Lucky Tea” (のんきに紅茶/Nonki ni koucha). They sound good, but unfortunately I can’t sample them, because they’re full of artificial sweeteners, which I am allergic to.

While I was wondering what kind of people would drink 1% alcoholic beverages (lightweights, I guess), I noticed that Suntory also had its own 1% alcohol, “The O.N.E.,” with commercials starring Lily Franky (リリー・フランキー) and Kiko Mizuhara (水原希子):

Does two make a trend?

By the way, The O.N.E. doesn’t have artificial sweeteners, so I could drink it, but the only flavors available are lemon (レモン) and grapefruit (グレープフルーツ), which are pretty standard, so it doesn’t seem worth it to drink them for only 1% of drunk.

But if you’re someone who usually can’t handle the booze, you might want to check these out.

Here are two videos of comedy duo Kumamushi (クマムシ) doing their comedy routine “Attakaindakara” (あったかいんだから/’Cause It’s Warm), in which one man imagines being reborn as a girl and becoming an idol while his partner insults him:

Here’s the official music video of “Attakaindakara” after it was released as an actual song:

This recipe is probably the easiest one I’ve posted on here so far, but the ingredients might be hard to find if you don’t live in Japan, so plan/substitute accordingly.

I use:

-Chicken breast (I use skinless)

-Honey umeboshi (ハチミツ梅干し/hachimitsu umeboshi)

-Mild salt umeboshi (うす塩梅干し/usushio umeboshi)

-Mizkan brand “Ponjure” ponzu jelly (ぽんジュレ)

-Shiso/perilla/ooba leaf (しそ／大葉)

-Mayonnaise

-Soy sauce

-Cooking sake

-Tomato

-Onion

-English muffins

1. First, cut the chicken breast up into patty-ish shapes. Try to flatten them out a bit so they’ll sit nicely on the bun. Season the patties with soy sauce.

2. Heat up some oil in a frying pan. Put the chicken breast patties in and cook one side for about a minute. Then, flip them over, pour some cooking sake in, and put a lid on. Steam them until they’re done (depends on thickness).

3. Make the umeboshi tartar sauce: Remove the pits from some of the salt umeboshi (about 1-2 per burger). Chop/smash them up with your knife until you have a ball of umeboshi goop. Put the goop in a bowl and mix it with mayonnaise (I think about a 1:1 ratio by volume is good, but taste as you go).

4. Prepare the toppings: Remove the pits from some honey umeboshi (1 per burger); leave them whole. Slice the tomato and onion. Wash the shiso leaves.

5. Mizkan’s ponzu jelly is a really good sauce for this. If you can’t find it, I recommend something light and fruity as an alternative. Maybe marmalade?

6. When your chicken is done steaming, stack all of the ingredients on half of an English muffin: chicken, shiso, tomato, onion, tartar sauce, honey umeboshi, ponzu jelly.

7. Put the other half of the English muffin on top, squish it down, and enjoy!

I’m a big fan of tofu. Recently I’ve been eating a lot of “Mascarpone no You na Natural Tofu” (マスカルポーネのようなナチュラルとうふ/Mascarpone-like Natural Tofu), made by Sagamiya (相模屋). While I wouldn’t necessarily compare it to cheese, it’s soft and tasty and is especially good with a drizzling of olive oil. But today, when I went to pick some up at the supermarket, I found something new on the shelf:

Of course I had to buy it. I felt a little trepidation as I used the included plastic spoon to plop it out of the container onto the conveniently enclosed styrofoam plate:

The consistency was a little watery. But the taste was…

REALLY GOOD!

It was something like a semi-sweet chocolate pudding, or a very squishy chocolate cake. There was only a slight hint of tofu flavor. It actually reminded me of a vegan cake.

Actually, as far as I can tell from the ingredients, this product appears to be vegan? So maybe give it a shot if you’re a vegan craving chocolate this Valentine’s! (I’m not a vegan, though, so I don’t know all the ins and outs of what is and isn’t vegan, so please check yourself if you’re a vegan planning to eat this.)

I give “Mascarpone no You na Natural Tofu: Chocolate Aji” two thumbs up (wayyyyyy better than Spoon Vege). It’s a seasonal item so it’ll probably disappear soon, so if you see it at your local supermarket, grab it while you still can!

Momoiro Clover Z’s (ももいろクローバーZ) newest single, “Yume no Ukiyo ni Saite Mina” (夢の浮世に咲いてみな/Try Blooming in the Floating World of Dreams), is their long-awaited collaboration with the heavily made-up American superstar band, KISS. The members of KISS wrote and performed the music for the song, and also provide backup vocals.

The single comes in two types: Momoclo version (ももクロ盤/Momokuro-ban) and KISS version (KISS盤/KISS-ban). The Momoclo version comes with a Blu-ray video of the music video; the KISS version has no video but has one extra song. That extra song is “Samurai Son.” “Samurai Son” has the same music as “Yume no Ukiyo ni Saite Mina,” but has English-language lyrics sung by KISS, with Momoiro Clover Z singing back-up. The lyrics to “Samurai Son” are a little different from “Yume no Ukiyo ni Saite Mina”‘s (see my English translation here)…but I suppose a certain amount of disparity to be expected when you have a collaboration between Japanese women in their 20’s and American men in their 60’s.